My Story I'm Writing...

[• Echo]

Xx*~_Chapter One_~*Xx
Graycee-Maye
I barely noticed the hum of the car as it drove down the road. And that was strange; I was usually so aware of my surroundings. My mom told me that the surrounding countryside outside the car was full of open meadows and tall woods. Wild horses grazed on the thick grass, deer bounded through the forests, and birds of prey flew overhead.
My name is Graycee-Maye Wilson, and I’m 16 years old. I’m different from my mom, though. She’s a full blood Elf. I’m half-elf, half-Mist Elf, or the Elves of the forests of Lylian who keep to themselves. Well, that must be where I get it from. And I’m a Crossbreed. A Crossbreed was an Elf, when, in their past lives, instead of being a human, Elf, or Half-Blood, which were half-Human half-Elf, had been an animal. Normally, when an animal dies and is reborn, they become another animal. The rare instances when they are reincarnated into an Elf, all of their traits and extra senses and instincts were put into the Elf, along with Elf personality and such. We all had so many extra senses, and they were stronger and faster than any animal, Elf, or Human alive. One downside was that we were always blind.
And most of us died before we became 14. So far, I had made it to 16 with out anything really strange happening to me. Yet. I didn’t really expect that to last much longer.
It was a beautiful day out in Ohio, and the windows in my mom’s car were rolled down. The warm summer air filtered in, and I was strangely glad that the heat and mosquitoes would soon be gone and snow would be coming. My mom and I were coming back from Detroit, and my twin sister, Amy, was now in the backseat. Amy hated the cold of Ohio and loved the heat of California where she was aloud to spend the summer with one of her best friends. Now I could practically feel the simmering anger emanating from her being as the car pulled into the driveway of our house in Grand Rapids.
I got out of the car quickly, the faster to escape Amy’s bitter rage, and breathed deeply. I whistled loudly, and an answering cree made its way back to me as a Peregrine falcon dropped out of the sky to land on my shoulder. I stroked the bird’s glossy head and reached out with my mind, touching the bird’s consciousness. When I had, I could see through the bird’s eyes. I blinked a few times as the light of the sun nearly blinded me, and took a few steps forward towards the left.
As I walked, my feet silently stepping lightly on the floor sent invisible vibrations for up to a mile away. The vibrations bounced off everything close to me and came back, and if I hadn’t been seeing through the Peregrine’s eyes, the vibrations would have formed a black-and-white image in my mind of everything. I walked to the fence and unlocked the gate, slipping into the backyard and latching the gate behind me. Iridessa balanced easily on my shoulder.
I pulled a pair of long, leather gloves that reached up to my elbows off of the fence and slipped them on, flexing my fingers inside the leather. I moved Iridessa from my shoulder to my left fist and kept going.
There was a sort of garage/workhouse stood ahead of me to my left, the side of the house to my right. A few trees swayed in the breeze, and behind the little workhouse was a line of gardens with things like corn, tomatoes, red- and- blackberries, potatoes, and more. Ahead of us thick reeds grew in a circle, with a few breaks in the reeds. I walked down by the gardens where a long break in the reeds were and sat down on the bank of a small pond. Directly across from me was another break, with a large pole, like a telephone pole, was slanted deep into the bank and a long, thick and sturdy rope hung from the top. Little steps and a platform were put around a third of the way up, the tip of the rope dipped in the water. My mom and I called it the Tarzan Rope, where we could swing off it into the water. To the right an old, wooden dock led into the water and largemouth bass and bluegill swam fearlessly around it. A little to the left and behind the Tarzan Rope was a weeping willow, and another one was to my left.
I sighed as I slipped out of my shoes and dug my toes into the warm water. I braced my arms on the soft grass behind me and bent my knees into the air, throwing my head back and closing my eyes. Iridessa hopped off of my wrist and lifted into the sky, her long, slanted wings made for speed lifting her high in the air. I opened my eyes and watched her fly gracefully through the air, still able to see through her eyes as long as she was close to me. A slight breeze ruffled the trees and blew my hair around me. A ripple shuddered across the pond’s surface, and I thought I saw something glinting under the surface. I frowned slightly, looking at the water, trying to see under the surface, but I couldn’t see anything.
I sighed again in defeat and stood up, stretching and picking up my shoes. Iridessa flew down to my shoulder and walked with me to the porch, where she lifted off my shoulder and rose into the sky. I withdrew from her mind to the enclosure of my own and slipped back into my world of darkness and black-and-white pictures. Mom was in the kitchen, and it sounded like Amy was upstairs, sourly unpacking her things in her room.
“Hey Mom,” I said, sliding onto one of the stools by the counters. The dining table was right behind me, and behind that was the little family room with the fireplace.
“Hello, Maye. It’s nice to see someone in a good mood,” she said with a sigh. I rolled my eyes.
“That’s just typical Amy, though,” I said, tracing my finger over the smooth counter.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I wish she liked it here,” she said, and I could hear the frown in her voice.
“What do you want for dinner?” she asked, changing the subject. I thought about it for a moment.
“Shrimp gumbo?” I asked.
“Sure. I won’t be cooking for awhile, so you can go swimming if you want,” Mom said, and I smiled.
“Okay!” I said, standing up.
“I know it’ll be a long shot, but can you ask Amy if she wants to go?” Mom asked, and I grimaced slightly. Good thing my back was to Mom.
“Sure, Mom,” I said, walking into the living room and going to the left, climbing the steep stairs. My room was on the left, Amy’s on the right, and in between was the bathroom. Mom slept downstairs. I turned warily to the right first, and knocked on Amy’s open door.
“What?” She was obviously still in a bad mood.
“Wanna go swimming?” I asked.
“No, I’m busy,” she said. It sounded like a good enough dismissal, and I left, going into the bathroom and getting a big beach towel. I walked into my room and shut the door quietly behind me. I changed quickly into my bathing suit, wrapping my towel around my slight body. I jogged carefully down the stairs and out the back door. Iridessa called out to me and landed on my towel-wrapped shoulder. I looked through her eyes, ignoring the itching feeling that came with it, and saw Mom tending to her gardens.
I walked across the soft grass to the dock. I let my towel fall in a pile at the base of the dock and walked to the edge. I sat down and swung my feet over the edge, letting my feet trail in the warm water. The bass swam around my feet fearlessly, and I splashed once and they swam a little away. Some fish would jump out of the water at flies and other insects. Birds called out happily to each other, horses grazed in the neighbor’s pasture, and the trees and reeds swayed gently in the wind. After a few minutes of this, I pushed myself off the dock and dived swiftly into the water, making almost no sound. The water was surprisingly warm, but I knew the farther down I went the colder it would get. I swam underwater a bit after I dived the surfaced for air. I was in the middle of the pond almost, and I looked around. I ducked under the water to wet my hair- and stopped, frowning. There was a sort of light, shining down at the bottom. I surfaced for a moment, still looking down. It was still there. I took a deep breath of air and dived straight down. My body moved like a water dancer. The water got steadily cooler, and I don’t know how far I dived. Large fish as big as me swam away, and even though I shouldn’t have been able to see anything in the pitch blackness, I found I could see as well as I could in broad daylight. I looked around, and saw… Something. I swam a little closer, my lungs beginning to feel uncomfortable.
I reached down into the deep mud and picked up a box. It was engraved with silver markings and set with jewels. Now my lungs were really feeling uncomfortable, and I resisted the strong urge to take a breath. I held the box close to my body and began swimming back up to the surface. The way up seemed slower than the way down, and my vision was blurring. Just when I felt I was going to faint, I broke through the water’s surface and took a deep, rasping breath. As my heartbeat slowed and my breathing returned to normal, I looked around. No one in sight, save for Iridessa as she watched me from her perch on the platform of the Tarzan Rope, aiding me in seeing.
I lifted the box out of the water and stared at the strange markings and jewels. I turned it around in my hands, it was about a foot and a half long and a foot wide, and then sighed. I looked toward the bank and began swimming to it, once again under water. I resurfaced at the rope and looked at it. The rope was a deep blue, thick, and sturdy. I tugged on it, and it didn’t break. I started swimming again to the bank. I stood up in knee deep water and waded to the bank, walking to the shade of the weeping willow. A makeshift swing on a white, sturdy rope swung in the breeze from a limb, and I sat on it, holding the box in my hands. I turned it all around but couldn’t find a way to open it. Just one key hole, but there was no key. I wondered about it, wondering how it had gotten in the pond, wondering what was inside, wondering where the key was, and wondering if I could open it without a key. It didn’t look like it. The box was sturdy, and even though it had obviously been in the pond for a while, it hadn’t started to rot in the least bit and still looked new. So breaking it wouldn’t work, and even if it did I wouldn’t try it on the risk of breaking what was inside.
I set the box on the ground and dug my toes into the grass, thinking. A whistle broke through the air, and I turned to see the horses in the field bordering our property canter to the fence, probably where their owner was standing.
I reached down and picked up the box, studying it for a few more minutes, then looked up into the branches of the tree. Mom would wonder where I had gotten this…
In a few minutes I was high up in the branches of the tree, wedging the box in a crook of a limb where no one could see it and where it wouldn’t fall. Then I climbed back down and walked to the Tarzan Rope. Iridessa saw my dripping body moving toward her and flew into the air, circling overhead. I swung off the rope for a few minutes before I heard Mom calling my name.
I swam back to the dock and pulled myself up over the side, scaring away bluegills and bass, and wrapped my towel around my body. I looked back at the willow and the pond while I squeezed water out of my hair, then walked to the back porch. Iridessa flew out of sight and I was enclosed in my own little world again.
“I’ll be making dinner soon, so go take a shower,” Mom said, meeting me on the porch. We walked back into the house, and I jogged up the stairs while Mom went to the kitchen. I took a fast shower, hanging up my bathing suit and the beach towel. I wrapped my body in a new, fuzzy towel and went to my room, locking the door behind me. I got dressed quickly and towel dried my hair, flicking a brush through it when I was done. I hung up my towel in the bathroom as Mom called Amy and I downstairs.
“Food’s done,” she said when I walked into the kitchen, Amy behind me.
“Ready for school tomorrow, Amy?” Mom asked.
“Hmm? Yeah, sure,” Amy said, already off in her own world.
“Okay… Maye, are you ready, too?“ Mom asked, and I nodded.
“Yep, I’ll be fine with Iridessa,” I said.
“Okay, good,” she said while I mixed my rice with the shrimp gumbo.
“Alright, I‘m going to bed. And great dinner, thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” Mom said. Mom started talking to Amy to make sure she was ready for school. I helped Mom with dishes, drying them off and putting the away, then said goodnight and went up to my room. I put the new Carrie Underwood CD in my radio and played it, running the words and rhythm over and over in my head, memorizing. After I knew all the songs and was singing along softly to them, I turned the radio off and got in my bed, pulling the covers up. I lay in bed, quietly, listening to Mom and Amy going to bed, before a dark blanket pulled over my mind, enveloping me in silence and peace.

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The next morning when my alarm went off at 6:00, I just lay in bed quietly. After a few minutes I got up and stretched, my hand wrapping around the small, cold locket swinging from my neck. I dressed quickly, hoping Mom hadn’t messed up my clothes, which she hardly ever does, and ran a brush through my hair. I brushed my teeth and jogged down the stairs.
“Whoa, slow down, Racehorse. You’re in a cheerful mood,” Mom commented when I got to the bottom, and I smiled small.
“First day nerves, don’t expect them to last,” I joked. Mom chuckled.
“Well, I have to get to work, so I love you, see you when I get home,” Mom said and kissed me on the cheek, then went upstairs to make sure Amy was up and to tell her bye. I threw some bread in the toaster, using my smell to know when it was done, and listened to Mom leave and Amy come downstairs.
“Mom gone?” she asked, and I nodded. She didn’t say anything more to me and began to make her own breakfast. I walked out the backdoor onto the patio and whistled. Iridessa flew down and landed on my shoulder. I blinked a few times to get used to the early morning light and sighed softly.
I turned around and opened the door again and walked inside, Iridessa still perched on my shoulder. Amy wrinkled her nose and made a face at me when I came in.
“Do you honestly have to bring that bird everywhere?” she asked with a roll of her eyes. My look obviously told her all she needed to hear, and she sighed exaggeratedly. I rolled my eyes at her back when she turned away and went back up the stairs. I grabbed my backpack and checked to make sure everything was in it and ready for school, then threw on a jacket and slung the strap over my shoulder. I jogged back down the stairs, Iridessa spreading out her wings to steady herself, and opened the front door.
“See you at school,” I called to Amy. She appeared in the hallway.
“Where you going?” she asked warily. I rolled my eyes again.
“I’m just going to school early and catch up with my friends, chill okay?” I said, then went outside before she could respond. She didn’t follow, of course, and I paused to adjust my shoulder strap. Iridessa rose into the sky and flew in large arcs above me. I smiled small and began walking down the little pathway by the house. The driveway was gravel and lined with well kept grass, and there was a patch of dirt road before the actual paved road itself. Cornfields and other fields lined the roads everywhere, and the farmer who owned them always gave my family a small amount of fresh greens in exchange for me working for him on his farm and for his crops. I roll my shoulders slightly and begin walking down the road. A car passed, and I recognized Mrs. Burke inside. She was an old friend of my mother’s, and she owned a general store in town.
I waved as the car went by, and she flashed a bright smile and waved back. I kept walking and watched the car as it began to disappear.
My family and I lived on the very outskirts of town, and we actually we really were living out of town. It took a few minutes to drive the mile or two into town, and although it took awhile walking, it was a nice morning event I enjoyed taking.
I could hear the town even before I could see it, and I saw Emily and Kaitlynn Barwick outside my friend Megan’s house. Emily and Kaitlynn were twin sisters, with red hair and hazel eyes. Megan appeared in the doorway and called them inside, then saw me out of the corner of her eye. She waved and held up a finger to say one minute before disappearing back into the house. Iridessa fluttered down from the sky and landed once more on my shoulder. She preened her feathers as I came to a stop and waited for Megan.
A moment later, Megan emerged from the house, her backpack straps over her shoulders.
“Hey!” She called out in her gentle voice. Megan always seemed to look like the perfect child; She loved her mom and siblings, went to church every Sunday, was very quite religious, and never swore or cussed or talked about people behind their backs. But she wasn’t always the perfect child, and as I had come to learn, was pretty stubborn. I seemed to have tried unsuccessfully to become a better friend to her, but, in my eyes, had failed miserably and given up. Now we hardly ever talked except in first period math class, and those conversations were rarities and forced out of me.
“Hello,” I said, stating to walk again when she came near. She fell into step beside me. As I glanced up at her, I realized she wasn’t so much taller than me as she had been the year before. I shrugged slightly to myself, actually acknowledging the fact that I had grown a bit since last year.
“What’s up?” she asked tentatively, as if knowing how uncomfortable I was.
At first glance, if you didn’t know Megan or myself very well, you would think we were as different as a red and blue moon. A red moon and you knew a war would soon be here, while with a blue moon, you knew that there would be a time of peace in the night and day for a while in the least.
If we were compared to the red and blue moons, I would probably be said to be the red moon. I was a rebel child it seemed, and don’t get me wrong, I loved my mother, and Amy, too, in my own way. But I got in quite a bit of trouble at school, as I sometimes talked back to the teachers when I thought something they said or did was unjust. I could get in yelling fights with others at school if they made me angry, which happened quite often. I liked to backtalk those who I didn’t get along well with and really seemed to enjoy going out of my way to get on their nerves. And I had found a special recipe online of this sort of green, and I had gotten surprisingly good at picking the locks at school… Not that I ever took anything out, just rearranged their locker a bit and poured in the slime. It came off fairy easily, but it wasn’t too pleasant. And it was interesting to put hissing roaches in backpacks… Well, I guess you get my point. I was a jerk, and I can’t really say whether or not I was proud of it, because I wasn’t quite sure yet.
Megan, of course, would be the blue. She hates it when others fight, and don’t get me wrong, I do, too, but she seems to be the peacemaker. People just seem to be calmer around her, and when she’s gone, everything gets out of control and awkward. Just last year, near the end of school, Megan had gotten sick and had been out for a long time, needing surgery. Her red hair had gotten so light that she had tried dying it to darken it, and it became near black. Now, as I looked at her in the early morning light, it was a dark brown, with red highlights in it.
I shrugged, realizing she was studying me as I thought of this, and it had probably been awhile since she had asked the question that she was waiting for me to answer.
“Not much,” I said. “Just waiting for school; not much else I can do.” She shrugged back and looked forward again. I sighed softly, too low for her to hear, and we continued walking through the small town.
A lot of people were now outside, some taking care of their animals, others just playing outside, standing around, or going somewhere. I saw a few of the kids from our school, the ones who actually were there on time usually everyday, as they walked to school. Despite how I had just felt a few minutes ago, I felt my before-school nerves come in again, and it put a little bounce in my stride. Because my mom, Amy, and I lived so far from town, I hadn’t seen my friends much this summer. Megan also looked a little excited, though we both kept going in silence. A wagon went up the street, and we moved out of the way.
“Hey, what elective are you taking?” I jumped slightly at the sound of Megan’s voice breaking through the wave of thoughts in my mind as the horses and wagon trotted off.
“Uhm, Avivia, you?” I responded. Avivia was the elective that trained you for war and things like that. The electives for an Elven school were usually the jobs you would have later on in life, and with Avivia, you worked with teams, and you all fought together (if need be in your life) if you didn’t quit. It was kinda like Human boot camp, I guess.
“Same here. Who do you think will be the teacher?” she asked, and I was surprised we were actually talking. She never even hung out with our “group”, I guess you could call it, and just walked around with Jamie and Zabrina. I wasn’t too sure about Jamie, who had just started hanging out with us after she had spent months with hardly seeing us outside of class because she was hanging out with her boyfriend, Cody. I didn’t know if they had broken up or if Cody just wasn’t at school for the last couple weeks but, oh well. I wasn’t even sure I really wanted to know. And Zabrina… well, I had known her for years, and we had always been friends then enemies, friends, then enemies… but the last few months of school, she had gotten really mad at me and convinced herself she hated me. Then, weeks later, she had said she would talk to me yet not be my friend. Her mood swings got really weird after that; one moment she’d be talking and laughing, the next she’d be glowering at me and claiming she still wasn’t even my friend.
“Who knows? They get a new teacher for that class for each year,” I responded, thinking. The teachers were usually part of another group or had been trained for stuff like that, or even someone from the last senior group who had decided to stay, and were the leaders after we graduated out senior year. Then it was off to college, and usually afterward, if we even went to college, we would join back up with our group from high school.

[Soul Hunter]

bit late but it's really well written... can't wait for the next part!!!! again sorry it's really late